SPRINGDALE -- When it comes to figuring out a solution to methamphetamine abuse in Northwest Arkansas and much of the Midwest, the debate is similar to the old chicken-egg question.
    Which came first, supply or demand?
    Clearly, if the demand wasn't there, the Northwest Arkansas drug market wouldn't be saturated with crank homemade in the Ozarks and imported from Mexico and the West.
    "You've got people in here who want it, so someone is always going to cash in and sell it," said Tim Keck, Rogers police chief and coordinator of the 19th Judicial District Drug Task Force in Benton and Carroll counties.
    Those who battle abuse of the drug mostly recognize the importance of fighting it several ways. By trying to educate people, authorities hope that potential users won't start and addicts can be helped to treatment. By actively fighting the "cookers" and dealers with aggressive investigation and tough laws, some may be deterred from selling it.
    "A solution to it is to eliminate it," said Bill Hardin, a former FBI agent and the state's drug director. "Law enforcement alone cannot eliminate it. That's proven. We've been fighting this battle [against drugs] since the 1970s. It's going to take a unified effort to make an impact."
    Keck said that while a multifaceted approach to stomping out methamphetamine is needed, prevention has got to be the key. Once someone is addicted, they often can't see past that to recognize consequences.
    "New sentencing laws make a difference on a small level, yes," Keck said. "I've personally talked to methamphetamine dealers who recognize, 'Hey, I can't do this again because I'm going to jail.'
    "But you've got to convince the people to stay away from it in the first place," he said. "Prevention programs are effective. But once you're an addict, sometimes there's no amount of treatment that helps."
    Benton County Circuit Judge David Clinger often hears the stories of people hurting themselves through meth use. They lose their jobs, children and freedom in his court often as a result of their actions.
    Clinger envisions a cooperative effort by police, judicial officers, health-care professionals and state prison representatives to develop a program that distinguishes large-scale meth dealers from addicts or small-time dealers who sell to support their habits.
    For hard-core meth distributors, the punishment should be prison without parole, "a real hammer," Clinger said. For addicts without felony histories, a diversion program should apply. It would give meth users a chance to admit their guilt in court and postpone their sentencing until they completed intensive rehabilitation through the state prison system. The environment would be controlled but would amount to more than simple incarceration.
    "The incentive is that these people can avoid the first-time felony conviction," Clinger said. "This way, the bricklayer, mechanic or lawyer who's gotten involved in methamphetamine for the first time can resume their professions, get their families back and resume their lives."
    Once defendants in the diversion program complete therapy, they'd be under monitor -- perhaps for five years -- during which any drug related violation or "backslide" would land them behind bars. The defendants would also be required to pay restitution to the state for the program's cost.
    Most important, diversion defendants would also be required to cooperate with prosecutors in the arrest of their methamphetamine suppliers.
    "This draws a wedge between the addict and the person selling it to him," Clinger said. "It also gives law enforcement a tool to combat the problem."
    The Arkansas Drug Council, which Hardin heads, spent $5.7 million in 1998 on law-enforcement efforts while it spent $14 million for education, treatment and prevention.
    "We're spending by a margin of almost 3 to 1 on education and treatment," Hardin said.
    That $14 million in state money and federal grants administered by the Arkansas Drug Council benefited many programs, including:
    Prevention programs that include grants to police agencies and sheriff's offices for Drug Abuse Resistance Education in elementary schools, commonly known as DARE, and other school presentations, Boys and Girls Club, community-service groups, workplace development programs and teacher-training programs throughout the state.
    Drug-treatment centers around the state, including Decision Point in Springdale.
    Treatment programs in the Arkansas Department of Correction, where prison statistics show 70 percent of the inmates are there for drug or drug-related crimes.
    The 3-to-1 spending ratio is being seen nationally, as well, Hardin said.
    John Sperling, drug-demand reduction coordinator for the Midwest High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, agrees with Hardin.
    "We recognize the importance of law enforcement," said Sperling, whose group represents counties in six states specifically targeted for increased efforts against methamphetamine. But a major focus of the national drug policy now is to educate and raise awareness.
    "If you can educate kids about drugs, alcohol and tobacco, hopefully they won't use it," Sperling said. "The demand came before the supply. As long as you have demand, there's going to be supply."
    Al Lopez, student relations coordinator at Rogers High School, thinks letting teens have close encounters with the consequences of methamphetamine is a poignant deterrent.
    "Take them to the jails. Show them someone their age who is serving time for methamphetamine and what it's done to their life and how it's torn their family apart," Lopez said.
    He points to a former Rogers High School student who is serving five years in the Arkansas Department of Correction for selling methamphetamine. The boy attended classes during the day and pulled night shifts at a chicken plant as the sole supporter of his family. That got to be too much, so he quit school and started selling methamphetamine.
    Lopez views methamphetamine as especially insidious to families new to Northwest Arkansas trying to establish a financial foundation through long work hours.
    "That's why we've got to hit hard on education in the schools," he said. "We've got to let the newcomers know that this drug may give you the energy to work that extra shift, but it will kill you in the end."
    Police and drug agents say they're fighting the supply as much as their often-limited resources allow.
    Fayetteville Police Lt. Greg Tabor, a former supervisor of the 4th Judicial District Drug Task Force, said officers have borrowed money from the Regional Organized Crime Information Center in Nashville, Tenn., to make big drug buys beyond what the local task force's resources could handle.
    Northwest Arkansas also sees more cooperative efforts between local, state and federal agencies. A multiagency investigation known as Operation Daycare involved several local departments, the Arkansas State Police, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and state and federal attorneys offices. peration Daycare, spanned 18 months and used a federal wiretap to trace a string of dealers from California to Northwest Arkansas. It culminated in January with the arrest of more than 30 people.
    Charles Smith, an assistant U.S. attorney in Fort Smith, is the designated Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement lawyer for the Western District of Arkansas.
    Most groups being investigated in western Arkansas are loosely organized, he said, but have ties to significant dealers capable of supplying large amounts of meth to the state.
    "We're trying to use more sophisticated techniques to track this," Smith said. Wiretaps, like those used in Operation Daycare, are becoming more common to trace sources.
    "Our drugs from Fort Smith north are almost exclusively meth," Smith said. Meth is being seen more frequently in the southern half of the western district now, but crack cocaine is still the major problem there, he said.
    Pound-plus seizures of meth are common in Northwest Arkansas, Smith said. Such quantities were unheard of a couple of years ago.
    The federal Drug Enforcement Administration expanded its Northwest Arkansas presence two years ago in response to increased drug trafficking. A Fort Smith office operates under the supervision of Rich Daniels, who works out of Fayetteville.
    Terry Jones, 4th Judicial District prosecuting attorney, said too few jails, not enough intensive treatment and unrealistic education programs contribute to the drug problems. The 4th Judicial District is Washington and Madison counties, where Jones said more than 50 percent of all arrests are made on meth charges or for crimes committed while high on or to obtain meth.
    "We don't know the solution. Everything works a little bit -- prison, rehab, drug courts. All of them work for some people but nothing's a total solution," Jones said. "No matter what the government does, people will seek out drugs."
    Drug courts, in which drug defendants are given treatment options, cost only about one-tenth of the costs to incarcerate someone but, Jones said, recidivism rates aren't dramatically different from those of the traditional court system.
    Jones contends probation officers in the regular court system could provide the same intensive supervision offered by drug courts if there was enough money to hire more of them.
    And while Arkansas spends more on drug education programs, Jones said government campaigns that overstate the effects of some drugs and try to scare people aren't effective.
    "There's a fine wire between propaganda and education," he said.
    There's not enough money to build enough jails to hold everyone who violates drug laws, Jones and other officials said. Already, more than 70 percent of new commitments to the state Department of Correction have a history of substance abuse and about half report being under the influence of alcohol or drugs at the time they committed their crimes, according the prison system's 1998 year-end report.
    A high number, 18.1 percent, are in prison for breaking controlled-substances laws, prison spokesman Dina Tyler said. "That's not a small number when you consider all the possible offenses."
    More than 3,000 of the system's 10,689 inmates took advantage of the Substance Abuse Treatment Program at the various prisons, Tyler said. Last year, methamphetamine surpassed cocaine as the drug of choice for those inmates, behind alcohol and marijuana. It was also the most frequently injected drug.
    Some new laws create mandatory prison sentences for meth offenders. Some require those convicted of certain meth crimes to serve at least 70 percent of their sentences before they are eligible for parole.
    In Benton County, prosecutors are recommending that people convicted of simple methamphetamine possession, or without the intent to sell, spend at least 120 days in the county jail. Mandatory drug treatment is typically included in the recommendation.
    "The jail time gives them time to dry out and, hopefully, deters them from using again," said Chris Plumlee, deputy prosecuting attorney.
    Incarceration is not the solution by itself, said Larry Counts, executive director of Decision Point, a treatment center in Springdale. Drug treatment costs one-third annually what it would cost to house a state prison inmate during the same period, he said.
    "I never met a person who can't quit," said Counts, who has treated addictions for 10 years. "They just can't stop starting. That's the problem."
    The chance of relapse drops when the addict gains a better quality of life. When treatment includes helping a person find a job or, in some cases, a home, it helps, Counts said.
    Counts has worked since November with others to develop a drug court system in Washington County. The program would allow some first-time, nonviolent offenders to get intensive drug treatment. Money for the program would provide 12 months of treatment if needed and frequent contact with a drug court official. Jail or prison time remains an option in drug courts, he said.
    "It's more like case management than probation," Counts said. Unlike Prosecuting Attorney Jones, Counts contends recidivism rates are far lower for those who've been through drug court instead of the traditional court system.
    Aaron "Dallas" Mills likes the more-involved approach. A former meth addict himself, Mills is now a substance-abuse counselor trainee at Decision Point who's working hard to get his counselor certification.
    He knows what it's like for the meth addicts who filter through Decision Point. Some are successful. Many are not. It took Mills 15 tries at rehabilitation before he kicked a meth addiction spanning 20 years, during which he served an eight-year Texas prison sentence for crimes committed to support his meth habit.
    It wasn't until Mills found a halfway house to help him beyond the standard 30-day treatment program that he found success.
    "It [a halfway house] lets you feel safe until you find a point where you're coping with life on life's terms," Mills said.
    It's hard, he said, being thrown from a 30-day treatment back into the same environment that led to the meth use. Mills also advocates educating children early about "what really happens" with drug use. "Society still wants to deny there's a problem until it hits their life," Mills said.
    U.S. Attorney Tom Monaghan of Nebraska heads the Midwest Methamphetamine Working Group, a loose-knit group of U.S. attorneys, including P.K. Holmes of Fort Smith, and other federal, state and local officials and police. The group members discuss their common problems with meth and help direct federal policy toward its control.
    "In many ways it's a symptom of what's wrong in our communities," Monaghan said of the meth problem. "For a long time, most people believed drugs were a product of the inner cities, the disadvantaged and those who couldn't help themselves. A lot of Americans felt superior to those with drug problems. Methamphetamine has showed us it's not that way.
    "Our rural areas have hopelessness, families which are dysfunctional, neighborhoods which are dysfunctional, just like urban areas. To solve the meth problem, we have to make changes in our families, our communities, our cities."
    People have to discover why others are using meth, why they're attracted to it.
    "I think people are beginning to become aware drugs, methamphetamine, can affect any family, any community," Monaghan said. "We need to be understanding and provide more treatment and intervention. It's coming. But we've got a long way to go."
   

This article was published on Monday, June 7, 1999